It is well known to be desirable to simultaneously record substantially identical photographic film and electronic video images of a subject. This is particularly useful in portrait photography, although other photographic situations may equally benefit from this capability. The recorded video images can be used, for example, as electronic "proofs" of the picture composition before the expense of developing and printing of the photographic negatives is incurred
The use of flash illumination is required for most indoor and some outdoor photographic opportunities. During such flash exposure, the film camera lens remains open for a predetermined period of time, while the flash illumination is provided during a window of time within this predetermined period. Because the flash illumination substantially entirely defines the exposure onto the photographic film, and because the flash illumination time is short, the operation of the film and video cameras must be carefully synchronized to obtain substantially identical images.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,805,037, Noble et al, describes one form of synchronization system in which the synchronization is such that when the film camera captures a photographic image of the subject, the video camera captures substantially the same view of the subject as an image frame comprised of two consecutive interlaced video fields, the flash illumination being substantially entirely and equallY distributed between the two fields of video information. The capturing of the video image is accomplished by inhibiting, during the flash illumination, any transfer of information from the image sensor in the video camera. Upon termination of the flash illumination, the next two video fields are transferred to provide a full video frame of the subject of interest. Although satisfactory for its intended purpose, this arrangement requires modification of a conventional video camera to provide means to inhibit the image transfer process and thus adds undesirable complexity and cost to the system.
It is therefore an object of the present invention, to provide a method and system for recording images of a subject in electronic and photosensitive mediums in which the film and video cameras are synchronized to capture substantially identical film and full frame video images with a single flash illumination.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and system of image recording system allowing simultaneous capture of flash illuminated film and video images of a subject that is simple and inexpensive to implement and does not require modification of conventional video camera structure.
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a method and system of the type described wherein the flash illumination can be initiated in a random manner with respect to the operation of the video components of the system while maintaining full flash illumination distribution across just two successive video fields.